DC City Council member-at-large Robert C. White, Jr., joined Grant & Danny Tuesday to shed a little more light onto the DC business side of the Capitals and Wizards leaving for Virginia – and not only did he corroborate Councilman Charles Allen’s claim last week that the Council didn’t see the $500 million offer from DC until the night before…he revealed they didn’t even know Ted Leonsis leaving town was on the table!
“The Council wasn’t even aware there was a possibility of the teams leaving until the evening before the announcement,” White said. “By the time Council was brought in, it was way too late. What I’ve learned is that there was frustration from Ted Leonsis that the city was neglecting them – of course, the Mayor has been pursuing the Commanders, and if I’m Ted Leonsis saying I need help and seeing the Mayor pursue another franchise, I’m gonna be frustrated. I think frustration that was preventable played a major role here, and it’s going to be a massive loss for the District. It never should have been a viable option for the Wizards and Capitals to leave."
The Council, he admitted, is not usually involved in negotiations like that, as that’s on “the Chief Executive Officer” aka Mayor Bowser in this case, so it was “a quick scramble” once the city sat down with Leonsis – and it indeed could have been prevented with more diligence from the Mayor.
“It was preventable, and a black eye on the city – and what I’m hearing is that Ted Leonsis was asking the city for help but not getting a response from the Mayor and her team, and that to me is really heartbreaking,” White said. “When you have an anchor like that, you have to prioritize keeping them there, especially when you can easily predict the type of difficulty the city will suffer from their loss. I want to stay united with city officials to say that if there’s something we can do to keep them, we’ll do that, but I also want to make sure that we’re not pretending that this is unlikely to happen.”
So what does DC do now?
“Now we have to figure out what we do to recover. I think a lot of people have their fingers crossed that this doesn’t work out with Virginia, but that can’t be our plan,” White said. “We have to ask ourselves what Penn Quarter will look like, and how we support our local businesses – and how do we console our fans? It’s going to be a devastating loss for us that could change the face of our downtown for decades. It’s hundreds of people who are employed by Monumental, restaurants that are supported by the foot traffic, tens of millions of dollars or tax revenue we use to support other programs.”
Monumental has said they plan to keep Capital One Arena alive with other events, likely including the Mystics, but White thinks it’s too soon to know, or even speculate, what that entails.
“I think it’s too soon to know what their ultimate plan is with the building, but it’s hard to imagine how you make up for the loss of 41 home games for the Caps and Wizards and still make this building useful,” White said. “I hope we can see something out of it, but it hurts to lose both of our teams. It’s a tough pill to swallow for Washingtonians. It is really a sad and difficult time.”
Right now, though, all they have is ‘a wake-up call’ to the City Council about what’s going on.
“The thinking on the Council has always been that the Mayor and her economic teams knew they couldn’t afford to lose these teams, but I just don’t think any of us thought this was likely to happen – and it has changed the way the Council is looking at some of the deals and assumptions we are making about how the city is being run,” White said. “This has really been a wake-up call for the city in many ways, and as much as it hurts to have this happen, we have to learn some lessons from this about what we need to do to keep our teams here and keep our revenue generation.”
Take a listen to White’s entire call-in above, which also has his thoughts on if and how crime in DC and around Cap One plays a role in all of this, what might happen if the teams do stay, and more.